Grafted In

Reading the Old Testament never fails to stress me out. With all the wonderful songs, prayers and poems there must be just as many plagues, impossible laws, unspeakable cruelties and inexplicable and even disturbing ways of God. But one thing the Old Testament has gifted to me is an indescribable feeling of gratitude. 

...And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in the rich nourishment from the root of God’s special olive tree. - Romans 11:17

Although I love nature, I know nothing of how to cultivate it. So I had to research what it meant to actually "graft in" one branch to another.  Articles referring to fruit trees said grafting in branches was preferable to planting seeds because it created a clone of the original instead of new varieties with unknown qualities. The images depicting the process showed the original branch sliced through the center, the foreign branch hugged tightly between the two parts of the original and tied together. 

This image took hold of my heart as I thought about God creating a way, through His perfect plan, to take hold of me as a part of His original chosen people. In the Old testament I would have been a hopeless outsider, a broken branch left to die on the ground. But God, in His great mercy, wraps me up in His enormous healing branches and revives me with His nourishing roots.

He claims me as His own, grafted in as a part of Himself.